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Naspers, Tencent expand in India

Cape Town - Chinese internet giant Tencent and local media conglomerate Naspers [JSE:NPN] have teamed up to further expand their footprint in India through another acquisition, TechCrunch reported on Friday.

Naspers owns just over a third of Tencent, which is China's largest online gaming and social networking company.

The Indian company Ibibo, 80% owned by Naspers subsidiary MIH and 20% owned by Tencent, has acquired redBus, an online bus ticketing company based in Bangalore.

Since 2006, redBus has gained more than 2 million users and in 2012 it sold more than 10 million bus tickets.

Although the purchase price has not been made public, it is rumoured to be in the range of $135m (about R1.38bn).

According to Ashish Kashyap, CEO and founder of Ibibo, redBus will continue to operate as a separate business.

“The Indian online bus market itself is under-penetrated at less than 6%,” Kashyap told TechCrunch.

That means more room for the company to grow at home first before its new owners could decide to take the model to other countries.

In July 2012, Tencent launched its mobile messaging app, WeChat, in India through Ibibo and it plans to expand to more Asian countries.

Due to robust sales of online games, Tencent posted a 36.5% increase in its profit for the fourth quarter in 2012, compared with the same period the year before.

At the time Tencent announced that it will heavily invest in its popular Weixin mobile chatting application (called WeChat in English-speaking countries) to attract more overseas users. It already has more than 300 million users.

Naspers, in turn, is growing its e-commerce activities. It has, for instance, already bought shares in the Romanian eMag, the Middle Eastern Souq.com and the Turkish markafoni.

* Fin24 is part of Media24, a subsidiary of Naspers.


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